Parliamentary Secretary for Industries and Production, Shahida Rehmani on Wednesday said the National Assembly Standing Committee on Climate Change had proposed the federal government to make maximum budgetary allocations to the Climate Change Division in the upcoming budget due to the country’s growing vulnerability owing to environmental degradation. She was addressing the consultative workshop in connection with World Environment Day celebrations titled “Pakistan’s Climate Budget 2022-2023” organized by the Center for Peace and Development Initiatives (CPDI).
MNA Rehmani said that the climate budget of the country demanded a holistic approach that endeavoured for a nexus of government, policy makers, academia, civil society and local communities for a unified efforts towards addressing environmental degradation and its associated risks. She said there was lack of intention and individual will among the stakeholders to act against climate change and threats of natural calamities derived by the human activities. The Parliamentary Secretary underlined that in order to curb the menace of plastic pollution and ecosystem degradation it was imperative for the society s a whole to return to the abandoned practices of eco-friendly solutions like reusable cotton bags and other material.
She noted that the country after an all-inclusive process had approved its Electric Vehicles Policy but it had no mechanism to manage e-wastage to be produced due to the lithium batteries being used in the charge-based vehicles. In his welcome remarks, Executive Director, CPDI, Mukhtar Ahmed Ali informed about the participants about the Institute and its latest initiative to start dialogue on environment and climate change which was a new concept for it due to its background of governance, democracy, the right to information and economic issues.
